Music Monday: What Becomes of the Brokenhearted

As is true for most teenage musicians who learn their instruments listening to the likes of The Beatles, Billy Joel, Joe Jackson, and Paul McCartney, I had aspirations of becoming a professional musician. Unlike most others my age, I didn’t really care for the idea of being a front-man, or touring the world showing off my fretboard and keyboard skills. I would have been happy writing songs and being a back-up or session musician. Around the age of 15 my friend Nick and I decided to form a band. He would be the lead singer (Nick was a natural athlete, well-built, and good-looking–perfect front-man material), and play guitar some (I was teaching him at the time), and I would play keyboards and guitar. While we had some songs of our own, we recognized that our songwriting skills were still developing, so we culled songs from our favorite records for covers. Had we ever toured, our set list would have been… different. Between the two of us, our tastes covered Motown, Billy Bragg, The Damned, Squeeze, UB40, McCartney, Billy Joel, and a host of others.

Since I had the better musical ear, it usually fell to me to learn the cover songs. Nick would come to school with tapes or LPs and a list of songs for me to figure out. Sometimes it was just one or two songs. Occasionally it was an entire album! I didn’t mind; I enjoyed the challenge and it exposed me to music I wouldn’t otherwise have heard. The only thing that really suffered for the time spent on these songs was my homework… and possibly my grades. But what do teenagers understand about priorities?

Nick was into Motown, and one of the songs he liked was Jimmy Ruffin’s “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted.” I already knew the song because Dave Stewart and Colin Blunstone recorded a synth version that was a hit in 1981, and I remembered liking it. But I had never tried working out the chords before. It presented a challenge to my 16-year-old ears, so this was not a 5 or 10 minute job. I still have the book in which I wrote the chords out as best as I could figure them. Have a look at how I did:

For comparison, I listened through to the song with my considerably older and more experienced ears. Here’s what I come up with now (click to enlarge):

Ooops! That last chord on the first page should be a Cm/Eb, not Cm/Ab!

As you can see, 16-year-old me didn’t do too badly. (The Em7b5 in the third line of the second verse on my old version is a longer, more descriptive way of writing E half-diminished.) Where I messed up was not paying close enough attention to the bass. The bass doesn’t move around a whole lot, but it does follow patterns. Rhythmically, it seems to be mimicking a heartbeat (especially in the introduction), and it rarely plays the root of the chord, moving up and down in half or whole intervals. So if there’s a lesson to be learned here, when trying to figure out songs, listen to the bass. (No, it’s not all about that bass–let’s not go there. Please.)

“What Becomes of the Brokenhearted” was written by William Weatherspoon, Paul Riser, and James Dean. Jimmy Ruffin, older brother of Temptations lead singer Dave Ruffin, identified with the song so much he asked if he could record it. The song has been covered a number of times since, but Ruffin’s is considered the definitive original. Ruffin passed away only last November at the age of 78.

For your listening pleasure, here’s Jimmy Ruffin’s version:

And here’s the Dave Stewart and Colin Blunstone version that caught my attention back in 1981: